Perhaps the title of this post should have been, "Beware of online offers," or of any offer where you have to pay up front. But the bottom line is it's all about customer service. What follows is an example of what I'm talking about, that just happened over the past week.
A photographer, who's webinars I've listened to many times, and who's mailing list I'm on, was offering a free webinar to talk about photography and business. I knew that during the webinar he would be making an offer for more information for a certain amount of money. The offer he promoted was $18.00, and for that you would have access to his vault of emails and telechart scripts plus other information to promote your business. You would also get one free month of what he calls his "inner circle," and you would have 31 days to cancel it or you would be charged the regular $39/month membership fee. I was hesitant to order - I don't like self renewing memberships. I've had problems in the past with those. After canceling the companies kept charging me. However, paying with a credit card, that problem is basically eliminated, so signed up for the offer.
Things went wrong immediately. The offer said my credit card wouldn't be charged until they sent me a link with user name and password to the information. But they charged my credit card and did not send me the link. I emailed them (they had a special email to use for problems) the next three days with no answer. Finally, on the fourth day, I sent an email to all of their email addresses. In the last 3 emails, I asked them to cancel my whole order and not to enroll me in their inner circle and refund my $18.00. Plus I initiated a credit card dispute, which I told them. After telling them this, they sent me the link with user name and password and told me they could not refund my money because I already received the link. The funny thing was someone there had already refunded my money.
How would I have handled the above situation? As soon as I found out what had happened, I would have apologized, explained what went wrong, why it wouldn't happen again, if there was anything we could do to make things right, and asked the customer if he would be interested in the info for perhaps half the price, or if he still would rather receive all money back. And then done whatever was asked at that point. Perhaps extend the offer for another week for the customer to give him time to think it over and perhaps re-order. And if he or she did, make darn sure thing went right before charging for it.
It wasn't about $18.00 - it was the principle of the thing (some say that is why they didn't like high school - it was the principal of the thing, lol). This was a photography company that emphasizes customer service and 100% no risk guarantees - unfortunately, their actions didn't follow their words.
Hope this give you an idea of how I would handle this kind of issue. No one's perfect, it's what you do afterwards that counts.
Hope you all are having a great weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment